1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer having a function of outputting the internal condition of the printer, and a method of outputting the internal condition of the printer.
2. Related Background Art
Some conventional printers can change their internal conditions in accordance with print information transmitted from an external unit (host computer). In addition, a change in internal condition of such a printer can be made by operating a button switch or the like on an operation panel arranged on the printer. In a printer of this type, the internal condition can be output. For example, the internal condition is printed on a recording medium or displayed on a liquid crystal display.
Some printers have nonvolatile memories for storing the internal conditions. In such a printer, when the internal condition is to be output, if the internal condition stored in the memory is different from print information from a host computer or the internal condition changed by an operation of a button switch on the operation panel, the internal condition is output while character attributes are changed to inform that the printer is set in a condition different from the initial setting. In the above printer, a code string representing the internal condition is stored in advance so that when the internal condition is to be output, code strings corresponding to the set conditions of the respective internal parameters are output. If, for example, this output means is to print the data on a recording medium, the code strings are printed by a predetermined printer. The print space for such data is generally determined by ruled line information and the like for expressing internal parameters and set conditions in the form of a table.
Not all of the internal parameters of a printer are independent, but some of them are dependent on other internal parameters. That is, depending on the set condition of a given internal parameter, a meaningless internal parameter, which has no influence on the operation state regardless of a change in the set condition, and a meaningful internal parameter, which causes a change in operation state when the set condition is changed, are present. Assume that in an internal parameter of "communication interface", "parallel communication" is set. In this case, an internal parameter of "baud-rate" for setting an information rate in serial communication is an unnecessary condition in the execution of "parallel communication" and hence is a meaningless internal parameter.
In the above-described conventional printer, however, meaningful internal parameters as well as meaningless internal parameters in the current set conditions are printed in a uniform print environment. For this reason, in the current internal condition of the printer, the meaningful and meaningless internal parameters cannot be discriminated. Therefore, a user cannot know which internal parameters he/she should operate.
In addition, in the conventional printer described above, the output internal condition includes no information associated with a method of setting each internal parameter, e.g., "set with a panel" or "set from a host computer". For example, therefore, when the user is to change internal parameters of the printer upon checking the current internal condition, he/she must perform cumbersome operations, e.g., referring to an operation manual to know a method of setting each internal parameter.
Furthermore, as in the conventional printer described above, when the internal condition is to be printed by using a predetermined code string, if the code string corresponding to the description of the internal condition is too long, it may overflow the print space predetermined by ruled line information and the like. In this case, in the conventional printer, the code string is processed by the following two methods: a method of continuing a print operation regardless of the condition described above, and a method of interrupting a print operation of the code string representing the set condition. For this reason, in the former method, since the description of the internal condition and the print information such as ruled line information are promiscuously printed together, disordered print results are produced. In the latter method, since the entire code string representing the internal condition is not printed, and the user cannot judge that the entire code string is printed, the user may misunderstand the internal condition of the printer.